


love, alone

by behzaintfunny



Category: Outlander (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Death, Grief/Mourning, Multi, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:07:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27711785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/behzaintfunny/pseuds/behzaintfunny
Summary: Of a man's intimate and long-lasting relationship with grief.
Relationships: Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser, Jamie Fraser & Murtagh Fraser
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	love, alone

**Author's Note:**

> This is by no means a happy fic.
> 
> Be warned of all the bad things happening canonically in Outlander, as they are discussed in this fic, too, and from the point of view of a person suffering from them. If you feel like this is too much for you, I understand completely. But if you do make it to the end, know that your comments mean the world to me.

Grief, it seems, is a thing with thorns.

Ones both of the sharp and the dull kind, twisting and intertwining, pressing into your skin just as often as drawing blood. These silent intruders that kindle an uneasy feeling inside one's chest, that settle and may dwell therein for undetermined amounts of time. Sometimes, it may indeed feel like forever, and even further still. A sort of perpetual ache, varying in pain and in sorrow, but present nonetheless.

A diligent caress on one's neck that may after all end as strangulation.

The master of disguise, cunning and cruel in its ways, it would always find a way into one's heart, no matter how strongly one fought against it. The one battle perhaps that one never had the chance of winning, no matter the odds.

Such was the thing about life, he supposes, that grief be a sort of invisible companion that would always feel the need hold his hand in its claws. Small splinters of blue-black pain, flashes of sorrow, followed by the faintest breath of what once used to be.

The memory, perhaps, that had ought to be forgotten.

Jamie never got to be with his father when he died; never indeed got to witness the last breath leave his lips, to tell him all which he never had the courage to say.

The memory itself is rather blurry in how pivotal a point in his life it was. More feelings than emotions, physical pain where mental would normally reside. And the bitter cold residue of blood painting his skin, cruel strikes of mockery and a dance with death he had come out of victorious, heart still beating. There was nothing victorious about coming back home, with his shield beside him rather than on top of it, only to bear witness to the most silence Lallybroch had ever seen.

Perhaps when his mother had departed the Earth, maybe then. He wouldn't be able to tell for sure either, not able to trust the memory of a grief-stricken boy who could not yet even comprehend what death was.

It was different when it had been Willie who left the planes of Earth to instead forever play with the faes and ghosts from his most beloved stories. In his still childish hope, Jamie had known that death would be kind to his beloved brother, holding him gently in the same way his father would. He figured all the weans go to a good place when they die, somewhere they would be comforted and taken care of perpetually, without the burdens of life straining their weak little hearts.

He wasn't so sure about where his mother went when she died.

Still, he sought her in the garden, the orchard and long-stretching fields, betwixt the tall trees and the thick blossoming bushes of varying kinds. He looked to the sky to see lone birds striving to find their place in the world, talked in low voices to the ladybirds that rested atop their crops. None of the creatures seemed to possess the answers he was looking for, though valiantly did he try, day and day again.

"She isnae comin' back, mo charaid." Murtagh would tell him come dusk, after a whole day of a search alas not fruitful, "'Tis only the birds and the bugs y'see out here."

"I didna want her to feel as though we'd all… forgotten." Jamie would confess to the blooming orchard and the great night sky, "Must be verra lonely for her not to be wi' us."

The moon had taken him into her embrace one moment, then Murtagh another.

"Dinna ever question that." his godfather would tell him, voice stern but painted with the edge of sadness, "She may be gone, aye, but that doesna mean we'll ever forget 'er, alright?"

What he took from that night, though still a young boy confused by the forces that control the world, is that life, in its essence, is only about getting to live another day with the ones we love.

It was only but a dream now, surreal and unclear in its ways. A life he used to lead, so far away from who he is now. The boy that trembled and cried in his godfather's arms is not the same boy who learned of his father's untimely passing.

Not a man yet, but a boy, ruined and broken, put through hell he hadn't previously known to be real, but a boy nonetheless.

The faintest memory of his sister telling him the truth; a deep, rotting feeling way down his gut, something primal and aghast, that he failed to be there when it happened. The very picture of the reason thereof painting the inner sides of his eyelids just as on his skin, like the devil had conjured the power to live inside his head, twisting and turning, never to be forgotten.

Oh, and pain, great, terrible pain…

…The very meat protecting his bones exposed to the cruel hot snow and the blistering cold whip; all nothing compared to what he felt once those few fatal words left wee Jenny's trembling lips.

That night, the trees were painted with the colours of autumn, and that of death. The leaves were falling onto the seeping wet ground as though they, too, knew what it is like to know, to love, and to have lost.

Grief had him in its embrace then, tight and cold as it may be. Little pins and needles crawling on the underside of his skin, the shadow of a ghost standing beside the north facing tower. Always looking, always searching. Nightmares walked the ground beside him, taunting him, walking him like a beast on a leash, making sure he never does forget the extent of his sin.

Such is man's greatest sin, perhaps, that they never know what picture be before the eyes of the ones they love the moment they die. Strikes of red, and red alone, and the towering great fortress. Commotion, sobbing and uncontrollable panic, clouding in the air above them like the most gruesome stench. There's nothing comforting about death -- only pain.

In his dreams and nightmares alike, Jamie breaks free from the restrains his devil had placed upon him. The blood is nothing, the pain transcended beyond him. He runs and runs and runs, for he may not be late again. He sees his father fall, like he hadn't seen on the very day, over and over on repeat like the most cruel broken note in a cursed symphony.

There is always something in his way. The devil beside him, the blood that weakens him, the gravel beneath his feet. No matter how hard he tries, Brian Fraser always evades him.

He has not the words to express what it is he feels, but God does he feel, twisting and turning in his sleep, jolting and grieving alike in his wake.

And yet life goes on, in the death of autumn and the rebirth of spring, ebbed on by the sun that always stubbornly rises come every morning, careless for the troubles of the night.

It takes time, yes, and more than he would please, but his wounds begin to heal, miraculously. It's hardly noticable at first, the way you could omit a small flower beginning to bloom, before it struck him. There it was -- something he would dare call normalcy.

And it felt a lot like falling in love.

Ivory pale skin untouched by sickness, cold brown locks that glimmered like the faintest auburn in the sunlight. Wonderful blue eyes which faced the world around them with immeasurable amounts of confusion. There it was -- hope, rekindled. Was she the very key to close the door on the pain inside him, once and for all? Could he have found her, just like that?

He hardly knew her at all then, and yet somehow he knew deep within him that he had to be mindful of her anxiety about everything around them. She wasn't like them. Ethereal, she was, and with sharp but honest wit to match. Jamie promised himself then he would live to see those eyes glimmer with happiness, or die trying.

And yet somehow, in the months following the arrival of his fae beauty, death was possibly the last thing on his mind. Love, alone, had made all the difference. It healed all the wounds, the external and such invisible to the outside world, blending them into his skin as though they were never even there in the first place. So it had seemed that he had no true life before her, closing a book on a particularly grim chapter before picking up the quill and writing it anew.

Claire, his dearest, was the very medicine she healed with.

He had asked her once, in a particularly dark moment, if there was a cure for sadness in her time. Deep down in his heart, he'd already known the answer.

What would it take to break even the strongest man?

When grief meets hate in a twisted and sick dance, what much is there other than ether? How is it that in a world with so much death, it hardly is the worst thing there is? Choking and exhilerating; dulling his senses with pleasure and pain.

When there's nothing else in the world for him, would he remember the pain?

And yet there was light, a most faint shimmer of hope in the otherwise dark ether. The first breeze of spring, a flurry in his chest, the knowledge that there is something in this world worth living for. A memory of something good preserved in sparkling golden sap for all eternity, never to be harmed, never to be lost.

Not grief. Love.

How hard it had been to reach out for that lifesaving strand, feeble and faint in the misty lows of pain. How hard indeed to fight back against the restraints on his heart and go up, up into the world of the eternal spring, where he would learn to live again.

For her, he would fight always, even if the enemy were himself.

There was a part of him hidden beneath the most external layers, a fragile and broken part that clung onto grief and pain desperately out of fear of what letting go would mean. Jumping face first into oblivion, be it from love or drink, was an idea just as freeing as it was terrifying; if he left the pain behind, how fiercely would it bite back?

If you choose deliberately not to feed the beast, what will become of it?

Though sharp and forceful, the silver constraints of his grief were almost comforting, familiar; not at all different to the rugged flesh on his back painted with the memory of hate. As time went on, he learned to simply live with them. Various pieces of his soul twisted in the restraints of pain, morphed to accomodate its presence, forming new strands around it. It was just as vital a part of his as any other.

A strangely silent companion; the fiercest of enemies.

Teasing him, letting him on; making him comfortable in his new life, giddy with love and the passions of normal life again, before crushing that happiness down on his head with a forlorn and false apology.

A child. A wee lass, they tell him.

She never even got to lay in her father's arms.

It was a curse, perhaps, that he would never get to experience the joy of being a father. A consequence of his own stupidity and valor that would haunt him until the end of days. They laid her to rest in a country they would never set foot on again. Isn't that the real tragedy of life, after all -- being forced to move on?

It was easy enough at first; when faced with so much death, it all accounts to something less. His psyche couldn't hurt him when blades and dirks were being thrust before his very face. It was easy enough to forget everything that had happened, everything that will.

She snuck up to him at night, a small bundle of shadows and whispers, curling a little hand around his own and not letting go. Though his eyes were filled with unshed tears, heart thumping erratically in his chest, it was not pain she brought, but faith.

He would chase her under the midnight sky, seek his little girl in the plains of grass, the way he would play as a young lad with his own father. Come the first light of morning, he would return with bloodied knees and a strained throat, curl into his lass and allow himself to hope that one day, perhaps, they could be happy again.

"Were you crying?" she would ask him, playing the sweet dance of pretense, lying blatantly to the shaking and sobbing behind her back, "Jamie?"

"'Tis only nothing." he'd say, "Only the usual."

How ironic indeed, to seek happiness in the very depths of hell. Then again, where else could he look? With the druids already long dancing afore his grave, what else was there to lose?

Only too much. Only everything, it seems.

It wasn't pain that brought them to the stone circle, but love.

It was almost like playing God, in a way, telling Claire to leave. An open and blatant abuse of his power above her, a dying man's wish. Even knowing the pain, he would have done it all over again. Knowing, somehow, that she was in a better place, had made all the difference.

It was all the more easier to die and to wage death upon others.

And so when he saw him, debauched and grinning atop the bloodied moor, it was almost as though some otherwordly force were pulling him forward. Jumping face first into the fire before reigniting it to shine even brighter. He wasn't killing to survive -- he was killing to free the memory of Randall from the constraints in his heart.

Set the beast loose and it will bite back even more fiercely.

The sun set that night on many more things than just one. The sweet taste of revenge lay atop his tongue in those moments he'd thought to be the last of his life, foolishly.

So he would feed the beast for months to come; letting go of his honour and dignity to instead live the life of an outlaw, forever escaping something, never quite knowing what. Was that life in its essence, just survival? Was everything before it even true?

Months blending into years, years into decades. Perpetual, bitter cold gnawing at his bones, going from one prison to another, holding desperately onto that golden strand of hope. Hoping, perhaps, that come one spring she would return to him as she once was, and that he could love her again as if he ever stopped.

And then, one such spring, she did. Was that not fate's finest play of all?

He'd almost forgotten how she felt beside him, what it felt like to touch her, to bask in her grace. The grief almost took that from him among many things -- almost, but not quite. And despite everything, life started anew, like the first feeble snowdrops blossoming after a long, long winter.

And then there were summer, autumn, spring. The winters were very few and scarce, a welcome change from what he remembers from his past. A calm but intricate melody leading them through life, day after day. The closest to normalcy he'd ever gotten, perhaps.

Though being a father was strange to navigate, it was all he never allowed himself to hope for; to after all of these years stand afore blood of his blood.

He thought, perhaps, that by some horrible chance she inherited some of his pain with her to reside beside her own. Watching the same terror and sadness paint her face that he remembers all too clearly from his, feeling small and useless against the horrors of the world. He failed to protect her, did not upkeep his oath as a father.

And there it was -- grief, its cold silver grasp on the very insides of his soul, bringing terrible thoughts to his mind and keeping him awake at night. He wished so badly to help her, but in all honesty he scarcely knew how.

And there were winters, harsh and cold, but there was also summer.

There he was -- the slightest bit older, yes, but so much happier than when Jamie had last seen him. The weariness of Ardsmuir prison barely reflected within him; even from afar, he was a beacon of hope and that of home. From up close, he was just lovely; and they were both young again, happy and pained but always, always together.

The one constant in his life -- Murtagh.

It was a good summer indeed, lively and happy. Though it was hard to ignore everything horrible that had happened, at least this much was true. At the end of the day, the sun shone bright and warm, and life was good.

For a while, at least. Then the silvery constraints grew tighter, their thorns relentless against Jamie's pleas. When autumn came, cold and bitter, so too did the brightly coloured leaves weakly fall to the ground; the most straightforward portrayal of death there is.

It was all so terribly familiar.

You see, Jamie never got to be with his father when he died; never indeed got to witness the last breath leave his lips, to tell him all which he never had the courage to say.

But it was not so with Murtagh.

The leaves had all long begun to fall, making their way into the soil and onto the promise of being reborn anew. All of it was all too familiar and all too strange. And there he was, perpetually aghast, falling right into his arms.

Was this what his father had hoped for, during his last dying moments, that Jamie would be there to catch him?

Jamie held Murtagh then, small, bleeding and quiet, so unbearably quiet, so unlike the volumes at which his own heart rattled in his chest. And there it was -- the last breath of autumn leaving his lips, and onto a cold, dark winter again. The coldest one yet, perhaps.

It wasn't James Fraser that walked out of that cursed tent where Murtagh's body lay; it wasn't even the Colonel, Alexander Malcolm, Mac Dubh, the Laird of Broch Tuarach or Jamie MacTavish.

It was again the grief-stricken boy who failed to comprehend what death even was. Not when it stood right before him, tall and proud, taking his godfather -- his father, his best friend, his anchor -- into her sinewy pale arms. Taking, _taking_ , always taking.

What indeed would it take to break even the strongest man?

How much more could the heart take before it breaks forever, leaving only the bittersweet residue of something that used to be?

And a great, deep hollow, where something beautiful once used to dwell, now deemed to forever despair with the revelation that it may never again be whole. For too long had it felt too good to be true, like little warm sparkles of sunshine telling him it shall all end well, eventually; holding on to a hope so great he never imagined a life without it.

Looking out into nothingness, Jamie breaks into a sob.

Panicked, he closes his eyes and wishes for Murtagh to appear beside him like he always would, to hold his hand and tell him all will be well. And yet all there is is the darkness, swallowing him whole just like it always would, only deeper, further down, until the very tears in his eyes are dark themselves. When you take away the anchor, what else is there than to drown?

How possibly could love alone pull him back to the surface?

And yet, despite everything, he breathes again, almost out of spite -- suffering against the bitter cold of winter, feeling strangely empty of love, but not alone.


End file.
